Friday, March 18, 2016

Easy Shapes Quilt Busy Bag

It's been quite a while since we created some new busy bags or busy boxes. That's why we were excited to join in on the A to Z Busy Bag series currently being hosted by Teach Me Mommy. There have been some incredible ideas in this series, which is great for inspiring some new sets for our own busy bag collection.

Our letter was Q - and we decided to create an Easy Shapes Quilt Busy Bag.

We wanted to keep things simple, and to use materials we already had on hand, so we used felt for our busy bag project.

Materials:
6 to 8 rectangle pieces of felt (Each one is about 8 x 12 inches.)

Two of the pieces I left whole, as they became the background pieces.

I cut the other pieces into different, simple shapes.

For our project I stayed with two shapes: rectangles and triangles.

I cut two different sized rectangles: 4 inches by 5 inches and 4 inches by 3 inches. I cut extra 4in. x 5 in. rectangles, and then cut those in half diagonally to create the triangles.

I made quite a few of each shape so that more than on kid could play at once.

It didn't take too long and the set was ready to be played with.

To engage with the bag, kids may need a little refresher on what a quilt really is. In our case we've seen some family members quilting and have several in the house, but we didn't really know how they can be pieced together in different designs. But, that's one reason this busy bag is a great idea. The more kids play with it, the more designs they can discover. (And they're working on geometry skills too!)

Kiddos use the whole pieces as background pieces and lay out the simple shapes on top of those pieces in different designs. Because all the edges are straight edges, the shapes can all fit together pretty easily. This leads for endless opportunities for quilt designs.

Kids can go simple, sticking with just rectangles.

Or patterns can get more complicated, like this one below.

When the boys settled into playing with the busy bag in the evening they each tried it in their own way.

Our first experience was more about exploring the materials so the next time I'd be interested to see how the kids explored creating a quilt.